Flag Down drama — Mark Bunker kicked out by conference organizer

We just heard from longtime Scientology critic Mark Bunker, who has just been summarily ejected from the Flag Down 2014 conference in Clearwater by organizer Laura Flynn.

“I just got kicked out and so did Tom Smith,” Bunker told us by telephone.

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Scientology archiving magazines online? Are they nuts?

If you’ve been hanging out with us for a while, you know that we bounce around from big stories with wide appeal to some things that only the truly obsessive will care about. Today we have a real treat for you obsessive types who love going down the Scientology rabbit hole.

One of our great tipsters let us know that the UK branch of Scientology has been putting a lot of recent church publications online in a growing archive. You longtime church watchers will know how unusual that is — Scientology is still very much stuck in the past and figures the solution to taking over the planet is through books, magazines, and pamphlets, and all on paper (the glossier the better). The Internet? It’s generally a thing to be feared and avoided. So for the UK org to be putting whole copies of Advance! online, for example, is quite a treat.

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Sunday Funnies: Scientology says, May the Fourth be with you

On Sundays, we share with you the latest fundraising mailers Scientology has sent out to its beleaguered members, who have been subjected to constant appeals and are generally exhausted.

How do you convince people to keep coming out for events where they’ll be under intense pressure to turn over thousands of dollars they can’t afford to give? In recent years, we’ve seen Scientology organizations get increasingly creative (and cheesy), hoping that a party with a pirate or superhero theme will somehow convince church members to come down for a another fleecing.

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Ken Dandar gets another day in court after his $1 million Scientology judgment

Please make sure you saw last night’s big news about the Garcia lawsuit; another judge has denied a Scientology motion in a major lawsuit. Now, on to today’s news…

One of our legal helpers noticed that Florida attorney Ken Dandar — who was recently hit by Scientology with a $1 million state court judgment in a bizarre legal case — has a hearing set in his federal lawsuit which he’s hoping will put the kibosh on the state court result. Confusing? You bet.

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SCIENTOLOGY DENIED: Federal judge finds that Garcia fraud lawsuit can continue

Luis and Rocio Garcia

Federal District Judge James D. Whittemore today issued an order denying a motion by Scientology that would have ended the fraud lawsuit brought last year by former church members Luis and Rocio Garcia, who say they were scammed for hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

The Garcias were longtime members who had been constantly hit up for increasing amounts in donations, and they claim they were lied to about how the money would be used. Today’s order allows the Garcias to file an amended complaint in the lawsuit after dropping three of the five Scientology corporate entities they originally named in the lawsuit. The order also lifts a stay in the case, allowing the Garcias to move forward on discovery, and allowing Judge Whittemore to get back to the question of whether Scientology can force the case into arbitration.

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Video Vault: Another dose of L. Ron Hubbard wisdom you aren’t supposed to see

We have another “quote video” that normally you can only see inside a Scientology “org.” In this case, it’s an excerpt that is used to entice church members to fork over $125 for a set of lectures that L. Ron Hubbard gave in Johannesburg in 1961.

The South African Anatomy Congress is described this way by Bridge Publications…

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Scientology’s E-meter police, and the horse doctor of LaBelle, Florida

Last month we told you about Jillian Schlesinger, a young woman who escaped from Scientology’s “Sea Organization” and then, just weeks later, began telling her story for publication. We wondered if that short period between her dash for freedom and speaking out might be a sign of Scientology’s deepening crisis that is driving so many members away.

And now another longtime member has decided to tell his story just weeks after walking away from the church.

Continue reading Scientology’s E-meter police, and the horse doctor of LaBelle, Florida

Scientology leader David Miscavige turns 54 today — Hip, hip, hooray!

On this special occasion, we’ll allow ourselves a little levity and congratulate Scientology leader David Miscavige on his 54th birthday with a humorous photo-illustration done by our old friend Jeffrey Augustine.

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Scientology’s ‘Hogwarts’ doesn’t want you to think it’s connected to Scientology

Back in 2011, when Rupert Murdoch was still paying for his iPad adventure, The Daily, a journalist named Benjamin Carlson did a really fine two-part series on the ultimate Scientology school, “Delphian” in Oregon. We thought it was clever that he referred to the high school as Scientology’s version of “Hogwarts.”

Although The Daily no longer exists, Carlson salvaged his piece on his own website, which you can read here. One of the things he notes is that although everyone in Scientology knows that the school is for the kids of the church’s wealthier members, on paper the school and the church are separate:

Continue reading Scientology’s ‘Hogwarts’ doesn’t want you to think it’s connected to Scientology

Chris Shelton on the origins of Scientology’s notorious ‘Fair Game’ policy

We have Chris Shelton’s next video, and we really like the way he traces the origins of Scientology’s notorious retaliation policy of “Fair Game” back to L. Ron Hubbard’s 1959 “Manual of Justice.”

As usual, Chris does an excellent job connecting the dots to illuminate a subject we thought we already knew well. And he’s right, Hubbard’s paranoia of the late 1950s can be seen clearly in the way current Scientology leader David Miscavige subjected his former lieutenant, Marty Rathbun, to years of bizarre surveillance and harassment in the last several years — more than 50 years after Hubbard first began to put these ideas into practice.

Continue reading Chris Shelton on the origins of Scientology’s notorious ‘Fair Game’ policy

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